BAF­TA and the Acad­e­my are wrong to rel­e­gate tech­ni­cal awards

If you man­aged to sit through the weary jokes, human glit­ter balls and impos­si­bly extra cla­r­i­phone per­for­mances that made up the 2019 BAF­TAs cer­e­mo­ny, you will have fleet­ing­ly enjoyed some of the most poignant and tri­umphant moments of the entire evening.

Tacked hasti­ly onto the back­end of the broad­cast in a short series of edit­ed high­lights, pro­duc­tion design­ers Fiona Crom­bie and Alice Fel­ton ded­i­cat­ed their win for The Favourite to work­ing moth­ers every­where, while Best Short Film win­ner Jonathan Hodg­son spoke out against Brex­it in his accep­tance speech. ​“We need Europe now more than ever,” was the quote that made the super­cut, and was received with rap­tur­ous applause.

Per­haps the most baf­fling win to miss out on prop­er screen time – to a First Man-themed cir­cus per­for­mance, no less – was the team behind Spi­der-Man: Into the Spi­der-Verse, who paid homage to Stan Lee in a touch­ing speech that was afford­ed just a few sec­onds dur­ing the broadcast.

“Ani­ma­tion is not a genre, it is a medi­um. And that medi­um is film,” writer-pro­duc­er Phil Lord says in the extend­ed cut, a sim­ple but pow­er­ful state­ment that holds to account awards cer­e­monies and their con­tin­u­ous dis­re­gard for those at the heart of the very indus­try they claim to celebrate.

Then on Mon­day, Acad­e­my pres­i­dent John Bai­ley announced that cin­e­matog­ra­phy, film edit­ing, live-action short and makeup/​hairstyling hon­ours will be hand­ed out dur­ing com­mer­cial breaks at this year’s Oscars.

The cat­e­gories, which include nom­i­na­tions for British indie cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Rob­bie Ryan for The Favourite and Border’s trans­for­ma­tive troll make­up cour­tesy of Goran Lund­strom and Pamela Goldammer, will be live-streamed over the Academy’s site and social media but cut from the show itself, spark­ing instant crit­i­cism from key indus­try folk.

“No one sin­gle film has ever exist­ed with­out CIN­E­MAtog­ra­phy and with­out edit­ing,” Alfon­so Cuarón tweet­ed, a sen­ti­ment that feels par­tic­u­lar­ly raw giv­en that the Mex­i­can film­mak­er taught him­self cin­e­matog­ra­phy for Roma after his reg­u­lar col­lab­o­ra­tor Emmanuel Lubez­ki was unable to join the project. He joins Ryan in the cat­e­go­ry this year.

Cuarón’s friend and fel­low Oscar-win­ner Guiller­mo del Toro also called out the deci­sion, accus­ing the body of dis­cred­it­ing the work of nom­i­nees by deny­ing them airtime:

“Cin­e­matog­ra­phy and Edit­ing are at the very heart of our craft. They are not inher­it­ed from a the­atri­cal tra­di­tion or a lit­er­ary tra­di­tion: they are cin­e­ma itself,” he said.

Moon direc­tor Dun­can Jones also weighed in: ​“For an awards do that is sup­posed to be by the indus­try, for the indus­try, the Acad­e­my sure doesn’t have a lot of respect for the crew who put in most of the work.”

Email­ing the Academy’s mem­ber­ship, Bai­ley attempt­ed to jus­ti­fy the cuts in the show by high­light­ing changes in con­tent con­sump­tion: ​“View­ing pat­terns for the Acad­e­my Awards are chang­ing quick­ly in our cur­rent mul­ti-media world, and our show must also evolve to suc­cess­ful­ly con­tin­ue pro­mot­ing motion pic­tures to a world­wide audience.”

With the dust still swirling around numer­ous con­tro­ver­sies tied to this year’s show, this is not just a blow to a large and long-stand­ing sec­tor of the indus­try, but a new rip in the sur­face of the acad­e­my, fur­ther high­light­ing their deeply ques­tion­able priorities.

The fire has been lit for progress, but it’s the peo­ple who receive the awards that tru­ly deserve to see change, and not glob­al con­tent providers.